Post-Fascist Fantasies examines the cultural function of the novels of communist authors in East Germany from a psychoanalytic angle. Various critics have argued that these socialist realist fictions ...were monolithic attempts to translate Communist dogma into the realm of aesthetics. Julia Hell argues to the contrary that they were in fact complex fictions sharing the theme of antifascism, the founding discourse of the German Democratic Republic. Employing an approach informed by Slavoj Zizek's work on the Communist's sublime body and by British psychoanalytic feminism's concern with feminine subjectivity, Hell first examines the antifascist works by exiled authors and authors tied to the resistance movement. She then strives to understand the role of Christa Wolf, the GDR's most prominent author, in the GDR's effort to reconstruct symbolic power after the Nazi period. By focusing on the unconscious fantasies about post-fascist body and post- fascist voice that suffuse the texts of Wolf and others, Hell radically reconceptualizes the notion of the author's subjective authenticity. Since this notion occupies a key position in previous literary-historical accounts of East German culture, Hell's psychoanalytic approach problematizes the established literary model of an "authentic feminine voice" that gradually liberates itself from the GDR's dominant ideological narrative. Far from operating solely on a narrowly political level, the novels of Wolf and others were intricate family sagas portraying psychic structures linked in complex ways to the GDR's social dynamics. Hell traces this link through East German literatrure's dominant narrative, a paternal narrative organized around the figure of the Communist father as antifascist hero.
Germany Kitschelt, Herbert; Streeck, Wolfgang
03/2004
eBook
From the 1960s to the 1980s, observers gave the name "Model Germany" to the Federal Republic. They saw in Germany a political-economic "model" that was able to weather many economic challenges. ..."Model Germany" permitted political competition, while coordinating public policy among interest associations and private businesses so that changes would only take place only in a balanced and positive way. Since the early 1990s this "German Model" has faced serious troubles. Authors in this book describe its disintegration in the past decade and probe into the causes of this. Articles argue that it is Germany's national and European integration that has triggered the model's unravelling. These processes are paralleled by tendencies in public opinion, social life styles, and political mobilization in parties, interest groups, and social movements. The strains of "model Germany" show up in the transformation of industrial relations, corporate governance structures, and social and immigration policies in Germany.
1. From Stability to Stagnation: Germany at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century Part 1: National Unification and European Integration 2. German Unification and 'Model Germany': An adventure in institutional conservatism 3. Germany and European Integration: A shifting of tectonic plates Part 2: Labour Markets, Life Styles and Political Preferences 4. New Ways of Life or Old Rigidities?: Changes in social structure and life courses and their political impact 5. The Crumbling Pillars of Social Partnership 6. Political-Economic Context and Partisan Strategies in the German Federal Elections, 1990-2002 7. The Changing Role of Political Protest Movements Part 3: Reorganisation of State and Political Economy 8. Corporate Governance and the Disintegration of Organised Capitalism in the 1990s 9. The State of the Welfare State: German social policy between macroeconomic retrenchment and microeconomic recalibration 10. The Politics of Citizenship in the New Republic
Detrital quartz grains from Paleozoic and Mesozoic sandstones from North Africa and central Europe, respectively, and from recent siliciclastic sediments of the Elbe River from Germany were analysed ...by IR spectroscopy with respect to their OH defect content. Sample sets were carefully chosen to cover different stratigraphic units from different localities and according to previous findings that indicate a significant change in the source region in the respective sedimentary system. The validity of the new method is compared to heavy mineral and zircon age spectra analysis from previous studies. Results reveal that the OH defect inventory in quartz shows in all investigated sedimentary successions significant internal variations from sample to sample and thus may be used as a tool to identify changes in the source region. The degree of changes observed with the new method does not necessarily reflect the magnitude in differences observed by other methods (such as heavy minerals and/or zircon age spectra), underlining the potential as complementary tool for provenance analysis. The new tool is also tested to estimate mixing proportions between the Variscan and the Scandinavian signal in the Elbe River, resulting in a surprisingly high contribution of the Nordic source.
Since the Euro crisis began, Germany has emerged as Europe's dominant power. During the last three years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been compared with Bismarck and even Hitler in the ...European media. And yet few can deny that Germany today is very different from the stereotype of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. After nearly seventy years of struggling with the Nazi past, Germans think that they more than anyone have learned its lessons. Above all, what the new Germany thinks it stands for is peace. Germany is unique in this combination of economic assertiveness and military abstinence. So what does it mean to have a “German Europe” in the twenty-first century? This book explains how Germany got to where it is now and where it might go in future. It explores German national identity and foreign policy through a series of tensions in German thinking and action: between continuity and change, between “normality” and “abnormality,” between economics and politics, and between Europe and the world.
Between the 1760s and 1914, thousands of young Americans crossed the Atlantic to enroll in German-speaking universities, but what was it like to be an American in, for instance, Halle, Heidelberg, ...Gottingen, or Leipzig? In this book, the author combines a statistical approach with a biographical approach in order to reconstruct the history of these educational pilgrimages and to illustrate the interconnectedness of student migration with educational reforms on both sides of the Atlantic. This detailed account of academic networking in European educational centers highlights the importance of travel for academic and cultural transformations in nineteenth-century America.
Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse offers an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of fundamental shifts in German cultural memory. Focusing on the resurgence of ...family stories in fiction, autobiography and in film, this study challenges the institutional boundaries of Germany's memory culture that have guided and arguably limited German identity debates. Essays on contemporary German literature are complemented by explorations of heritage films and museum discourse. Together these essays put forward a compelling theory of family narratives and a critical evaluation of generational discourse.
Germany is clearly the dominant economic force in Europe. It occupies the pivotal position of being at the centre of both the EC and of attempts to rebuild the economies of East Central Europe. The ...German Economy traces the various aspects of German policy and growth, concentrating in particular on the last two decades. These include:
the German economy in perspective
the regional dimension
fiscal policy
monetary policy
social policy
the labour market
banking and finance
industry, trade and economic policy.
In The German Economy Eric Owen Smith has produced the only comprehensive account of the contemporary German economy currently available in English.
Sulphur isotope analysis of archaeological materials provides information on past ecosystems, palaeo-diets, migration and mobility. This review covers the geochemical background, including the ...variability of sulphur isotope compositions in the geo-, hydro-, and biosphere. Then, a substantive review of archaeological studies is undertaken to introduce this new marker for archaeological sciences and demonstrate its possible applications for future research.
Using newly available material from both sides of the Iron Curtain, William Glenn Gray explores West Germany's efforts to prevent international acceptance of East Germany as a legitimate state ...following World War II. Unwilling to accept the division of their country, West German leaders regarded the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an illegitimate upstart--a puppet of the occupying Soviet forces. Together with France, Britain, and the United States, West Germany applied political and financial pressure around the globe to ensure that the GDR remain unrecognized by all countries outside the communist camp. Proclamations of ideological solidarity and narrowly targeted bursts of aid gave the GDR momentary leverage in such diverse countries as Egypt, Iraq, Ghana, and Indonesia; yet West Germany's intimidation tactics, coupled with its vastly superior economic resources, blocked any decisive East German breakthrough. Gray argues that Bonn's isolation campaign was dropped not for want of success, but as a result of changes in West German priorities as the struggle against East Germany came to hamper efforts at reconciliation with Israel, Poland, and Yugoslavia--all countries of special relevance to Germany's recent past. Interest in a morally grounded diplomacy, together with the growing conviction that the GDR could no longer be ignored, led to the abandonment of Bonn's effective but outdated efforts to hinder worldwide recognition of the East German regime.
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